Loneliness
by Melon Fuhrer
Summary: It's been a year; Winry Rockbell is left with nothing after her boys are stranded on Earth. She receives a phone call from a man with his own demons, and one thing leads to another. Winroy; implied EdWin and Royai. Oneshot; complete.


**DISCLAIMER:** All recognizable material belongs to the great cow.

**A/N:** This is borderline AU, set after the Conqueror of Shamballa and the 2003 storyline; however, Roy is not the one who murdered Winry's parents in this.

* * *

If he had to pinpoint the exact moment where this mess began, he knew he only had himself to blame. It had been his bright idea to invite her over, after all. Things had only escalated from there.

"General Mustang?" her voice, just a hair's breadth lower than when he had met her as a small girl, questioned, sounding thoroughly perplexed. "Why are you calling me? Not that I'm not glad to hear from you, but…" Her words hung in the air, leaving an uncomfortably large space between them.

Roy cleared his throat and answered, "I just wanted to check up on you, see how you're holding up after-" he stopped. After what happened with Ed and Al. He couldn't manage to bring forth the words caught in his throat. He doubted she wanted to hear them anyway.

"I'm all right, General," she whispered after a minute of silence. He assumed she had heard what he hadn't said. He could hear the tears she was restraining.

He pressed forward. "I wanted to invite you and your grandmother over for dinner tomorrow night. I know it won't be an easy day for anyone tomorrow…" he muttered, referring to that fact that it would be the one-year anniversary of the day the boys had as good as died. There was no way of knowing what lives they were leading on the other side, if they had survived at all.

Like she needed the reminder.

"That's very kind of you, General, but actually-" she stopped, her next words frozen on her tongue. She couldn't bring herself to say it, not over the phone. It was too emotional a thing to whisper through a wire. Suddenly, she changed her mind, deciding against turning him down. "You know, what, what the hell," Winry declared. "Sure."

* * *

She followed his directions as best she could, but it turned out he wasn't very adept at giving them. She had to stop once at a phone booth to call and ask for a reference point in the middle of the hustle and bustle of Central.

Somehow, Winry managed to find his address. She knocked tentatively on the door, suddenly anxious that she'd mistaken the house and a stranger would answer. Her stomach knotted further with every passing moment in which no one came to the door. But finally, it opened, and a solemn-looking Brigadier General Roy Mustang blinked down at her, nearly eye-level with the young woman. She was half-surprised to see that he wasn't wearing his uniform, but then again, why would he when he wasn't at work?

"Miss Rockbell," he breathed. He almost smiled at her, but he suddenly noticed that something was off. "Where's your grandmother?"

Winry's eyes tightened, and she cast her eyes elsewhere. "She couldn't make it," she said lamely, by way of explanation. She didn't elaborate, and Roy had the good sense not to press the matter. Wordlessly, he stepped aside to let her in.

"I've got a roast going in the oven, and it should be done soon; I guess I made a little too much food, though…" he trailed off, the volume of his voice immediately decreasing as he realized what he was saying.

Winry wasn't exactly listening, though; she was looking around his home, apparently expecting other guests. Roy nearly asked her what was wrong when she spoke up first. "Where's Lieutenant Hawkeye?"

Roy paled. "What? Why do you ask?"

The blonde girl (was she a woman now? She certainly looked it) seemed confused. "I… I thought you two were-"

He cut her off, knowing what she was about to say. "We're not _anything_, Miss Rockbell," he stated sharply.

"Oh," she breathed, an unreadable look on her face. "Winry," she added after a moment. "Please just call me Winry."

He blinked, then smirked at her. "Winry, then. Call me Roy."

She gave him a small smile in return. "Roy," she agreed.

* * *

She wasn't eating, not really. Roy watched her push the food around on her plate for a solid fifteen minutes as she made idle conversation. Finally he set his fork down and looked her in the eye.

"Is there something wrong with my cooking?" he asked.

Winry blinked, her face turning a light shade of pink. "No, not at all!" she replied hastily, impulsively shoving a forkful of cold meat in her mouth. "It's very good, really it is," she assured him.

He didn't buy the act. "Then why aren't you eating?"

She froze for a moment before sighing, setting her fork down on her plate. Swallowing the mush in her mouth, she wiped her lip with a napkin and averted her gaze from his. "I'm sure you can guess why. It_ is_ the reason you invited me over, isn't it?"

He sighed as well, leaning back in his chair. "I suppose so."

They sat in mournful silence for a long moment, both of them unsure where to go from here. Roy was beginning to feel that this entire thing was a very bad idea, and Winry was beginning to question why she had even come. She supposed that really, the only reason was that she was lonely.

Silently, Winry stood and cleared her place, casting an apologetic look at Roy for not finishing her food. The returning glance he gave her told her he understood.

As she moved towards the kitchen, she heard him get up and follow her. His long strides took him faster than she walked, and he beat her there. He reached over to take her dishes from her, but due to his impaired vision on his left his hand miscalculated and brushed against her where it should not. Immediately he snatched it back, his head turned away from her so she couldn't see the shade his face was turning. He spluttered out an apology and moved away from her, towards the sink.

Winry, however, couldn't seem muster up any shock or embarrassment, or even anger like she supposed she should have felt. Instead of dwelling on the fact that a (rather attractive) man had touched her breast - albeit accidentally - or that he was at least a decade older than her and thus making the entire situation highly inappropriate, all she could focus on was the fact that she couldn't remember the last time she had felt the touch of another person. On impulse, she set her plate and fork down on the nearest available surface and took a few strides closer to him, placing a hand on his shoulder, reveling in the warmth that radiated through the fabric of his button-up shirt.

Suddenly, the overwhelming desire to pour everything out, to have her pain and suffering acknowledged by another human being, gripped her, and a few tears slid from her eyes. "Do you want to know why Granny couldn't come with me, Roy?" she asked, sorrow lining her voice.

He bit his lip, regretting his earlier question regarding the subject. "You don't have to tell me, I know we aren't that close and-"

But Winry didn't hear him. She was on autopilot; she needed to get rid of the skeletons in her heart, and if he had ears then _dammit_ he was going to listen, if only because no one else would.

"She died. About a month after it happened. She got sick and died, just like that. She left me all alone and… I've got nothing now. All of my family is dead, and I don't make enough from my automail to move anywhere else.. I just.." she trailed off, not even knowing how to finish her thoughts. All she really felt was loneliness, something not easily expressed through words.

Roy, still very much aware of her soft hand gripping his shoulder, turned slightly towards her. "I'm sorry," was all he could manage. Realizing he still couldn't very well see her due to the eyepatch, he faced her full-on, unable to help noticing how much she resembled another blonde woman, one he'd driven out of his own life.

She saw it then - what he had been fighting for the last year, what he was lying to himself about. He felt just as lost and alone as she did.

Somewhere along the way, Winry had forgotten that she wasn't the only one affected by the loss of the Elrics, forgot that they weren't just _her _boys. She'd forgotten that they were family to others as well; Roy had loved them like sons, like younger brothers. That much was plain as day to her. She realized that he had been hit just as hard as she had, though he'd also lost someone _else_ who'd meant a lot to him as well.

Maybe it was out of a need to comfort and ease another person's pain, or maybe just because of the sense of relief that came in finding solace of another person who shared her grief. But Winry did something extremely stupid then.

She tilted her head up and kissed him.

Roy froze, completely and utterly shocked. His brain couldn't wrap itself around the young woman before him, what she was doing. He didn't even have time to kick his mind into gear and pull away from her before she had separated herself from him, her face deep scarlet.

"I-I'm so sorry," she stuttered. "I don't know what came over me, I-"

Winry didn't finish her sentence. She saw something burning in his dark eyes, and while it vaguely scared her, she also felt somewhat intrigued. She let him push her towards the kitchen counter, his breathing heavy and his hands reaching up to rest on her hips. Roy began to lean towards her, stopping a fraction of an inch from her mouth.

"How old are you?" he murmured. He had to know. Brigadier General Roy Mustang had done many things in his life that he wasn't proud of, but he would not take advantage of someone underage.

Her fingers tentatively brushed his cheek. "Nineteen. Almost twenty."

That seemed to satisfy him. Winry gasped as his lips crushed hers, his hands slipping under her shirt and gliding across her stomach, slowly but surely inching higher. Her own hands tangled into his short, dark hair, pulling him harder against her. She felt the heat gradually increase between them.

Except it wasn't them. He was a bit shorter, and blonde; she was a few years older, with darker eyes. That was fine. She was okay with that.

At some point, his tongue retreated back into his own mouth and he pulled back half an inch, his hand hovering above the clasp of her bra. "Stop me," he pleaded desperately, his eyes like night. "Tell me no."

In place of a response, she brought him back to her and slid her fingers down to unbutton his shirt, finding toned muscles beneath her fingertips. She could tell he needed this as badly as she did; they were both starved for another's presence, another's touch. Neither of them would be able to handle being alone tonight.

Her shirt quickly landed on the floor atop his, and Roy barely remembered to lean over and close the blinds in the kitchen so the neighbors had no chance of seeing them.

The night passed like a hurricane, their emotions haywire. Even though they both knew it was wrong, _so wrong_, neither of them had the willpower to stop. Roy blamed himself, though his conscience had deserted him long ago - something which was, admittedly, entirely his fault. Winry gripped him tighter, assuring him that even though everything was a mess, she wasn't objecting. She felt alive; she felt human. She felt like she wasn't stranded in the mess she called her life. And she could see it in his eyes when he pulled back slightly to look at her, to make sure once again that she was truly all right with what was happening. He felt the same.

It was one less lonely night for both of them.


End file.
